Ghost World (2001)

★★★★
Enid (Thora Birch) sits in the front row at her high school graduation. Decked out in her cap and gown, she watches as a classmate in a wheelchair and back brace gives a speech describing high school as the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. A trio of rappers in full '90s apparel (still in style in 2001) runs out on stage to entertain the class and audience. Enid is not amused. Her friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) is equally unimpressed. After the ceremony, the two run out of the auditorium and stomp on their caps. That's what they think of their high school years. What do characters like this do afterwards? This is the story of Enid and Rebecca and that phase of their life when the future is uncertain. Based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff, Ghost World is a funny and touching story taking place during that uncertain time when someone is old enough to start thinking about the future but too young to commit to anything.

Lionheart (1991)

★★½
Growing up, I was a big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He came across as a ripped version of Chuck Norris with the added ability to perform gravity-defying moves along with his signature splits. At the risk of running afoul of Norris, whose accomplishments have been documented in a convenient and inexhaustible list of facts, I would go so far as to declare Van Damme's movies as superior in terms of their variety. Norris always had the no-nonsense approach, while fellow European Arnold Schwarzenegger brought his muscular frame to his action movies. Van Damme was the best of both worlds. He was tough, but could soften up when the situation arose. He also had a magnificent physique. His punches and kicks looked like there was plenty of raw power behind them. His drug habit and waning audience interest in martial arts movies sent his career into the direct-to-video market. For a time, though, his movies were a yearly expectation in theaters, and Lionheart was one of his most polished movies.

The Doom Generation (1995)

★★
The Doom Generation is the kind of movie that works best (if it can be argued that it works at all) when watched in the middle of the night. That was when I first saw it. I got off the late shift one night in 1997 and turned on H.B.O., and there it was. I watched it again recently late at night prior to writing these words. The lack of ambient noise heightens the movie's nuances. Most of the scenes take place in the eerie dark landscape of Los Angeles. The city's most recognizable spots are nowhere to be seen. The characters are the worst that Generation X has to offer. They slither out when everyone else has retired for the evening. They barely go out during the day. When they do, director Gregg Araki is eager for the sun to go down again. His trio of losers occupies a society seemingly on the edge of disaster, like the pseudo-civilization seen in Mad Max before Max's journey into the wasteland. Araki, a baby boomer, apparently had little confidence that Gen X could succeed. As the middle entry of his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, The Doom Generation is the worst-case scenario for a demographic raised on sugar and empty calories and with a reputation for being called slacker and disaffected. His kids are violent, overly sexualized, contemptible and unintelligent.